1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the handling of cartridge cases and more particularly to method and apparatus for cleaning and polishing cartridge cases prior to reloading them with powder for reuse.
2. State of the Art
Reloading of rifle and pistol cartridge cases has become popular with sportsmen throughout the world for reusing cartridge cases which have been fired rather than wastefully discarding such used cases. Once the cartridge cases have been used, however, they tend to become dirty and oxidized prior to the time when the sportsman has time to reload them. The dirt and oxidation on the exterior of the cartridge cases, besides looking bad, causes two serious problems when the cases are reloaded are reused. First, in the reloading of such cases, the dirt and grime on the exterior of the cases scratch and otherwise harm the interior surfaces and other parts of the reloading dies, and, in addition, the dirty cartridge cases have a tendency to stick in the reloading dies. Second, the dirty cartridge cases which have been reloaded for reuse scratch and otherwise damage the chamber of the rifle or pistol in which they are used, and in some instances will stick to the chamber of the rifle or pistol.
Heretofore, reloaders have had to generally resort to manual scrubbing of the dirty cartridge cases, or to cleaning the cases in rock-tumbling apparatus, which is very slow, very messy, and quite expensive.
Objectives
The principal objective of the present invention is to provide a simple method and apparatus which can be used in conjunction with a rotary drill to quickly and easily clean and polish used cartridge cases. A particular object of the invention is to provide a tool which is used with standard cartridge case shellholders to quickly and easily mount a cartridge case to a drill chuck for rotating the cartridge case about its longitudinal axis, so that the rotating cylindrical surface of the cartridge case can be cleaned and polished by contacting the rotating surface with a mild abrasive material, such as steel wool.